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I had ordered some T-Shirts at the Memorial Day sale and I was very happy about the new, low shipping cost.
The delivery was faster than with USPS and the t-shirts arrived at 2013-06-06. I was also pleased that I could pay customs and VAT directly to the post man.

However:
1. FedEx charged me an additional €12.50 “administration fee”. This is something I wish I had known before. Maybe you didn’t know either.
2. I had to pay too much customs+VAT because the value was declared without the discount. It was quite a hassle and took until today to have the difference repaid.

Below the line I was content with the proceedings, but at these two points there is room for improvement.

16 Replies

Ohhh thats odd! all my dbh orders were declared with discounts!
The administration fee was charged by FedEx or by the german post?
I know that UPS charges a fee for bringing your goods through the customs …and not a small amount…without asking your permissions of course…but thats a different story.

well after reading several german forums about FedEx and the administration fees – you do not need to pay this fee to fedex since you did not requested this service.
next time just simply deny that and say that you will handle the customs by yourself.

I’m not entirely sure what the administration fee is for. I’ve reached out to our international shipping specialist at FedEx to try and get some clarification. It’s possible that due to the size of your FIMS order which was right on the brink of not being able to be shipped using FIMS they had to do something special to move it forward through customs, but that is just speculation on my part. Hopefully I’ll get a response soon.

In addition, the value was declared correctly. I’m looking at your label and it’s your subtotal minus discounts and shipping costs. You paid $263.40 after discounts which also included your shipping ($10) and the total declared value for the contents of your package on the CN22 customs declaration on the label was $253.40.

@cosmicsecret – Hmm. Weird I have a sent email from July 11th to your email address on your profile. I sent you three shirts, one of which was Happy Adventurer (the bandana wearing panda tee). I’m really hoping it gets there by the end of this week. Check your trash/spam, perhaps Google just didn’t want to deliver my mail to your inbox.

@Inked
i re-checked the spam folder and found your mail.
Will let you know once they are arrived ;)
Regarding the administration fees, those are charged from FedEx because they pay up in front the customs taxes for you and do the customs stuff. well sometimes i have to collect my parcels from the customs office (bringing a invoice of that parcel with you) and pay then my custom taxes.
so depending on how far you live away from your customs office in charge, the 12euro might not be too bad…since it saved you the way to the office and the incl. waiting time ;-)

I believe you if you say the label was correct. J have thrown away the packaging already.
However, FedEx charged me ~€125 and my only explanation of this number was 17% duty plus 19% VAT on the un-discounted value. So maybe they had, for whatever reason, that number in their system.

I have just placed another order that is duty- and tax-free because of the little value. I am eager to see what will happen.

Did they by chance open your package for inspection? Last year a package we shipped to Canada was opened for inspection and Canadian customs charged that customer customs fees at the retail rate of the package and not at the declared amount the customer paid, which they can do if they choose too. It’s usually only done in instances where they believe the shipper and the recipient are trying to avoid paying the import fees though. Just a thought.

The german customs can open a parcel/bag/envelope etc. without you being next to it in person but they have to put a sticker/seal on it that they had opened it!
They usually do that when they do not believe in the declared value of the content,then they look for a packaging slip/invoice.
This happend only 2 times to me from parcels from India.

For us german customers, the customs can only charge the price we paid for the goods. thats it .
bgr : you received a “invoice” from the customs – usually its attached on your parcel.
There is a detailed listing of which value they charged you the customs taxes.
Take a look at that.

Cosmicsecret is correct regarding the opening of the package. The CN22 customs declaration specifically states “This item/parcel may be opened officially.” It’s a requirement for international shipping that gives them the authority to open the parcel to inspect the contents without you present and as cosmicsecret mentioned, they are required by law in most countries to then label your package with some form of a seal that states it was opened by a customs agent.

A lot of packages that get returned to us for various reasons are opened by their destination countries customs office, and most times the stated reason is to verify the contents matches the customs declaration. I can’t state with any authority how often, why, or if it’s purely random as I’m sure it’s very different from office to office, but it’s not uncommon.

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